Friday round-up
on Jul 5, 2013 at 10:27 am
Recent coverage of, and commentary on, the Court focused on last week’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in which the Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which established the formula used to determine which state and local governments are required to comply with the Act’s “preclearance” requirement. At this blog, Lyle Denniston examines new legal disputes over Texas’s voting laws that have arisen in the wake of the decision. The state contends that it no longer has to clear its voting laws with the federal government, so that existing challenges to those laws should be dismissed. At ACSblog, Gilda R. Daniels argues that Congress should require “Voter Impact Statements” to be submitted to the Department of Justice whenever voting changes are proposed. At the Huffington Post, Ilya Shapiro cites the Shelby County decision, among others, as evidence that the Court as a whole is “moving in a libertarian direction,” but Nina Totenberg of NPR – as part of her Term-in-review wrap-up – observes that, “[a]lthough the decision was hailed by many political conservatives, its reviews from academic and judicial conservatives were considerably less admiring.”
Briefly:
- At this blog, Timothy Huebner discusses the “first Court-packing plan”: attempts by the Civil War-era Republican Congress to influence the Court by changing the number of Justices.
- Joan Biskupic of Reuters reports that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “plans to stay several more years on the bench.”
- Sam Stanton and David Siders of the Sacramento Bee report that California plans to ask the Supreme Court to stay a federal court’s order to reduce its prison population.
Disclosures: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondent in Shelby County v. Holder; Tejinder Singh of the law firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C. was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by international human rights advocates in support of the respondents in Hollingsworth v. Perry; Kevin Russell of the law firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C. was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by former senators in support of Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor.
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